New Nvidia card: Codename "GF100"

[Duff-Man]

So giving that nVidia have designed Fermi as a general purpose microprocessor first and a 3D accelerator second, nVidia obviously feels that the future of PC's as a gaming machine is in question? I wonder what timeframe period they're projecting for the death of PC gaming?

All client-side gaming is on a limited lifespan.

Eventually we will all be streaming our games over the internet, with all the rendering done server-side. How long this will take to become the norm is anyone's guess, but there are already plenty of things in construction which don't require any local rendering.

 

[cyberheater]

All client-side gaming is on a limited lifespan.

Eventually we will all be streaming our games over the internet, with all the rendering done server-side. How long this will take to become the norm is anyone's guess, but there are already plenty of things in construction which don't require any local rendering.

Well, I'm sure the publishers would love that business model but I really hope it doesn't go that way. Not unless there is a way for the open community to piggy back onto the servers.

Any way you look at it, it'll end up being subscription based just like cable tv but for it to succeed, the games would have to appeal to a very broad range of the populous, the very definition of casual games. Sounds yuck.

 

[Sylver123]

All client-side gaming is on a limited lifespan.

Eventually we will all be streaming our games over the internet, with all the rendering done server-side. How long this will take to become the norm is anyone's guess, but there are already plenty of things in construction which don't require any local rendering.

Wouldn`t that mean we would have no need to upgrade our processors or graphics cards anymore if for gaming??? and wouldn`t this also impact pc hardware sales???

 

[PermaBanned]

Who knows...

If it's going to go for that kind of price, it better be able to compete with the 5870x2. Which I doubt. We will have to wait and see.

Well since having two chips on one card is better than running crossfire, and crossfire generally gives AT LEAST a 60% increase in performance no, i don't think it will.

 

[Lightnix]

All client-side gaming is on a limited lifespan.

Eventually we will all be streaming our games over the internet, with all the rendering done server-side. How long this will take to become the norm is anyone's guess, but there are already plenty of things in construction which don't require any local rendering.

Oh god I bloody well hope not, compression artefacts, latency, count me out thank you very much!

 

[Duff-Man]

Wouldn`t that mean we would have no need to upgrade our processors or graphics cards anymore if for gaming??? and wouldn`t this also impact pc hardware sales???

Well, processors and memory etc would still be important for general everyday tasks. Graphics cards would become much less important.

It certainly would have a big impact on PC hardware sales, but at the end of the day this can't be avoided - it's the demand for hardware that determines supply. It's in game developers best interests to have games run server-side for obvious reasons (uniform hardware spec, can charge subscriptions for continuous income, no need for expensive distribution, everyone can have access without buying a console or expensive PC hardware etc etc). So, once games are run in this way there is much less need to produce high end graphics hardware.

Sucks balls if you ask me - it will encourage 'lowest common denominator' gaming, and your framerate will always be at the mercy of the server speed, which will be affected by the number of people playing. But still, it's coming, and this might be one of the reasons why nvidia is has chosen to go down the GPGPU route instead. There will be a market for these kinds of cards long after traditional consumer graphics cards are dead.

 

[titaniumx3]

Now way thats gonna happen, unless they magically develop faster than light communications ... or gaming becomes so dumbed down, quick reactions and skill lose meaning.

 

[cyberheater]

Wouldn`t that mean we would have no need to upgrade our processors or graphics cards anymore if for gaming??? and wouldn`t this also impact pc hardware sales???

All the hardware would be bought by the server companies and it's kinda what's happening already with cloud computing and web based apps. You'd end up having the equivalent of a sky box for gaming in your living room.

I can't imagine a scenario where there would be server farms powerful enough and cheap enough to provide all it's users suitable gaming performance at a price that they would be willing to pay.

 

[Duff-Man]

Now way thats gonna happen, unless they magically develop faster than light communications ... or gaming becomes so dumbed down, quick reactions and skill lose meaning.

Well, we can already get "good" latencies in online gaming. Sub 20ms is common with fast servers in this country, and is much faster than the human reflex time.

What we're missing is reliably high data transfer rates. But once you can reliably stream a high-def 720p video over the internet, you can also stream a game in 720p. We're not there yet, but we aren't too far off.

I hate the whole ****ing idea personally, but what can you do? We can't fight technological progress.

 

[jigger]

You don't think consoles will make PC gaming redundant ?

 

[Duff-Man]

You don't think consoles will make PC gaming redundant ?

Consoles would be made redundant by streaming technology, in the same way that PC gaming would.

Why have expensive computation and rendering equipment in your living room when you can just have a tiny, silent box to connect you to the internet and stream the game to your TV?

 

[Sylver123]

Also if this does happen, we wont be able to buy our games on DVD/CD Media like we do at the moment.

Personally, I hope this doesn`t happen because I prefer having my games on DVD/CD Media.

And what about offline gaming???

 

[Orangey]

Cloud gaming is pie in the sky, a GPU for every person playing? Datacenter nightmare, just for the costs alone.

It'll be casual games only and maybe a couple of real games with the sliders turned way down just for mainstream people that don't know any better. Just look at the vapourware OnLive system.

 

[alexthecheese]

This whole client-side processing of games has already been developed and is being tested. It went around the news a while ago. Google OnLive.

 

[alexthecheese]

Oop beaten to the OnLIve reference.

 

[Duff-Man]

Cloud gaming is pie in the sky, a GPU for every person playing? Datacenter nightmare, just for the costs alone.

Not neccesarily - remember it will all be subscription based, so the cost is covered by effectively renting the GPU you use, for as long as you play.

We'll have to wait and see how it develops, but in principle it should be cheaper overall on the hardware side of things. By centralising the processing, each GPU can be kept in operation close to 100% of the time. With each end-user having their own GPU, it only gets used when you actually choose to play a game, which is going to be at most one or two hours per day (well, for most people anyway!). Hence the total number of GPUs needed to keep everyone gaming is less than if we all have our own.

 

[Lightnix]

Not neccesarily - remember it will all be subscription based, so the cost is covered by effectively renting the GPU you use, for as long as you play.

We'll have to wait and see how it develops, but in principle it should be cheaper overall on the hardware side of things. By centralising the processing, each GPU can be kept in operation close to 100% of the time. With each end-user having their own GPU, it only gets used when you actually choose to play a game, which is going to be at most one or two hours per day (well, for most people anyway!). Hence the total number of GPUs needed to keep everyone gaming is less than if we all have our own.

The problem is really the centralisation process though - it's infeasible. If you want everyone to have a decent gaming experience, you're going to have to make a lot of local servers which will cost a lot to maintain and staff. If you want total centralisation, or even partial centralisation (say one server per country, for example), the system will suck for a lot of people.

 

[TheGamingGeneral]

Certainly feasable, Sony are ditching physical media with there PSP GO, and am fairly sure I read Blu ray will be the last format we see before web based services take over. I'm in two minds about it, I like having my epic geek hardware in my own home, besides, the UK isnt exactly famous for it's blistering internet speeds.

I think we will need to see a lot of investment on that front before it become viable. In my opinion atleast.

 

[Duff-Man]

The problem is really the centralisation process though - it's infeasible. If you want everyone to have a decent gaming experience, you're going to have to make a lot of local servers which will cost a lot to maintain and staff. If you want total centralisation, or even partial centralisation (say one server per country, for example), the system will suck for a lot of people.

I imagine it'll work out that you have multiple server farms per country, operated by independent companies who buy massive numbers of licenses for the various games, and subscription revenue that's shared with the game publishers. But yeah, you have a point about the staffing costs. It's hard enough keeping a relatively small CPU cluster working constantly without 24/7 attention from well trained personnel.

 

[Orangey]

The BT shareholders are holding the country back, they've voted down fiber rollouts time and again. Unless David Cameron completely subsidises the operation (bear in mind Eric Schmidt of Google has his ear) the majority of us will be stuck with crappy "up to" speeds of barely 5Mb, if we're lucky.